Two People, Hiv-positive, Tell Students Of Choices They Made

April 01, 1998|By EILEEN DAVIS; Courant Staff Writer

SOUTH WINDSOR — Just by looking at Shannon Miller and Brian Libert, the eighth-graders gathered in the Timothy Edwards Middle School library Tuesday never would have guessed that they were HIV-positive.

But appearances can be deceiving, the two stressed. That's how they contracted the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS -- through unprotected heterosexual sex with their partners, people they thought were perfectly healthy.

Miller, 24, of Manchester, became sexually active at around 16. She was engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart and had been accepted into the University of Connecticut. Life couldn't have been better.

At 19, she learned the deadly secret her fiance had been hiding -- he had full-blown AIDS. She got tested and learned that she was HIV-positive.

Libert, 34, of Hartford, was also engaged to be married. He and his fiancee took the required blood tests, which is when he learned that he had contracted HIV. He contacted some of the women he had dated in the past; none had the virus. He immediately told his fiancee, who chose to stick by him. They married a month later, on Jan. 1, 1992.

While neither Miller nor Libert looked sick, both made clear to the students that they were living proof that AIDS doesn't discriminate. Miller is white. Libert is African American.

Libert said he regrets not heeding his mother's warning against premarital sex. But he told the students that they don't have to make the same mistake he did.

``A lot of youths will say, `It's my life and I can do what I want,' '' he said. ``That's foolish and it's wrong.''

Miller told them they had to make their own decisions, but to make sure they made smart ones.

Two other speakers, one of whom had HIV and another who had full-blown AIDS, also spoke to the students about how the medicine they must take often makes them feel sicker and how people often shun them once they learn they have the AIDS virus.

The speakers said unprotected sex and intravenous drug use are the most common ways of getting infected with HIV.

Tuesday's talk was part of a weeklong series at the school called ``The Voices of AIDS Week.'' All of the school's 350 eighth-graders are participating in the series, which was organized by the school's health department.

The students each created their own individualized felt AIDS panels that were linked together and are on display in the school's main lobby. Students' poems about AIDS are showcased in a glass display that also features a large red AIDS awareness ribbon.

``It got through to me more than health class because we were talking to people with AIDS,'' Erin DeMallie, 14, who wore a red ribbon pinned to her shirt, said afterward.

Tom Schindler, also 14, said he had already learned much of what the speakers talked about, ``but it kind of reinforced it.''